I appreciate the responses I've received on this matter! Between this group and people responding on Facebook and the 10er email group, we have a healthy level of interest that should give us the critical mass we need to proceed.
I've reached back out to the Folkerths at Shopsmith for confirmation of a date for the event, and I expect we'll have that firmed up next week. With that in place, I'll start making some inquiries into hotel options for the out of towners, and will try to determine options for some of the offsite activities. I've also asked the Shopsmith team for their point of contact for the logistics, to make sure we can coordinate and get all the interested participants the information they need to make their individual plans.
Stay tuned - and thanks for your support on this effort!
The important details first...
A few weeks back, I started a thread inquiring about interest in a Shopsmith enthusiast event to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the release of the original Model 10-E. There’s been a lot of progress, so let me do a quick summary, then I’ll provide more background:
- The current plan is to target an in-person event in Dayton, OH sometime in October. This would be a “Friday afternoon through Sunday morning” event, similar to the User Group meetings that Shopsmith has staged in the past.
- This would be hosted largely at the Shopsmith headquarters facility, and provide an opportunity for a factory tour, product/technique demonstrations, and keynote/updates/product announcements from Shopsmith management.
- Outside of the factory-based activities, the user community would have an opportunity to organize some social activities and/or group meals, if there’s sufficient interest.
Now some background details:
- First of all, I haven’t forgotten the many community members who understandably will not be able to travel to OH to attend. Although I can’t guarantee a live-stream of any portion of this, I would expect a recording could be made for later online viewing of the factory events.
- The Folkerth family who owns Shopsmith Inc. is very enthusiastic about the prospect of supporting a user community event. When I spoke to them recently to make the proposal, they volunteered to host the key events at the headquarters facility, and set the expectation that there would be no cost for the factory-based events.
- They were excited about the pending release of their new e-commerce website, and mentioned that they have some other exciting announcements that they would be able to reveal at the time of the event.
- They indicated that they could provide some of the organizational logistics – providing a sign-up page on their website, and reaching out to their own mailing list with invitations. Once the plans are better established, I’m sure that the Shopsmith team would appreciate any efforts we in the community can make to get the word out to potential participants, even outside of current Shopsmith users.
- Friday cocktail meet-and-greet
- Saturday wrap-up banquet (could include vendor presentations, panel discussions, etc.)
- Outing (a trip to the National Museum of the Air Force is cheap and spectacular!)
